The British Pound Struggles on Through December

Welcome to the second currency report for December, covering another busy week for the British pound. It may not be the most encouraging of weeks, but we have all the news you need right here.

An overview of the currency markets for December 10th – December 14th, 2018

We begin, as always, with a view of the British pound’s performance against the US dollar. This gave us an opening rate of 1.2764, but the first three days of the week were far from ideal for the British currency. Indeed, after three significant losses we were left with a rate of 1.2587 by Wednesday night. This equated to a loss of over 0.0175 cents. We managed to reverse some of those losses the following day by reaching 1.2655. However, it was not enough to prevent another loss from occurring on Friday, taking us to a disappointing rate of 1.2561 by Friday night.

We did not expect things to go well against the euro, given the stalemate we have seen during the Brexit negotiations. However, the result panned out slightly differently to how we might have expected it to. The pound began trading on 1.1225 before dipping early on to finish Monday on 1.1080. This was far from a good start to the week, but the pound pulled itself up and performed far better over the remaining four days. We did not recoup all those losses, but by Friday evening when the markets closed, we managed to finish trading on 1.1131.

By this point we were not confident of any notable successes for this week. Would we be proven correct in our thinking when assessing the performance of the pound against the Hong Kong dollar? We began trading on 9.975 here and would not go back into the 10.0 territory we had occupied until recently. Instead, we began the week with three losses that took us to 9.8400 by Wednesday night. In a pattern that mirrored the pound’s performance against the American dollar, the British currency rose to 9.8836 before falling again to close out the week on 9.8144.

We often see a reversal of fortunes – or at least of the pattern we’ve viewed thus far – when we look at the New Zealand dollar. That was the case this week as well. The pound began trading on 1.8586 here, before falling to 1.8315 two days later. However, that bad start to the week was replaced by three positive days to end it. We could not recoup the losses we had racked up thus far, but we did at least manage to get up to 1.8492 by the time Friday night arrived.

Just one stop left now – the Australian dollar. The pound opened the week on 1.7697 here, before falling from grace over the next three days. This meant Wednesday’s closing exchange rate on the markets stalled at 1.7453. Again, the pound did manage a couple of more encouraging days to finish the week, but the losses were again apparent across the whole week. We finished on 1.7535 in the end.

Notable events in the world of currency

Another fall against the Canadian dollar

The pound began the week on 1.7096 here before dropping over three out of five days. This resulted in a closing rate on Friday night of 1.6803.

More of the same against the Swiss franc

The drop here was not quite as pronounced, but it still sent the pound tumbling from 1.2683 to 1.2527 over the entire week.

Even the Icelandic krona gets the better of the pound

After opening on 156.592, the pound dropped to a low of 155.133 the following day. It recovered somewhat to close the week on 156.286.

There was little to get excited about this week. That has been the case in recent weeks for the British pound. We can but hope things will improve, but that is unlikely given the uncertainty in the air at present. Perhaps the New Year will bring better things, although at the moment we cannot be certain of that either.